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The Human Flower Project is an international newsgroup, photo album and discussion of humankind’s relationship with the floral world. We report on art, medicine, society, history, politics, religion, and commerce. Written and photographic submissions are welcome. Julie Ardery

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Human Flower Project

Gardening & Landscape

Thursday, July 05, 2012

Royalish Flower Seed

​Seed from some of the plants grown at Buckingham Palace are now on sale, but will their royal connections get them across international borders?

The gardens at Buckingham Palace

You may not be royalty, but you too can grow poppies (even we have managed that). Nobody curtsey for you recently? Stand tall, and grow the same upright ginger as blooms at Buckingham Palace.

The BBC reports that 11 plant varieties from among the more than 350 flowers that grow there can be yours.

During the Hampton Court Flower Show, running until Sunday, the seed will be for sale at the Plant Heritage Seed Shop, for a minimum £1 donation to “the charity.” (which we take to mean Plant Heritage, not the British monarchy, which seems to be solvent).

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Conceptual Gardening

With design, aesthetics and ecological concerns leading the way, symbolism isn’t much of a force in contemporary gardening. But we offer two examples where concept dominates, one noble, the other daffy.

The Zoar garden with its symbolic spruce at the center.

​Our first stab at a garden, on High St. in Lexington, Kentucky, was as conceptually ambitious as it was horticulturally shaky. (Aesthetics/design? What are those?)

In a squarish back yard surrounded by a high (inherited) fence, we planned an astrological garden, sectioning the perimeter into 12 beds and designating each to a zodiacal sign, Aries to the East, Cancer to the North, Libra toward the West, and Capricorn on the South. Then we went about finding plants and objects that corresponded to each sign.

Windflowers? In Gemini of course.Zinnias for Leo. A vine of moonflowers under Cancer, etc. At a flea market we came upon a very strange plaster statue: a monkey in a blue nurse’s uniform holding a bedpan. Perfect for Virgo!

The astrological garden on High St., Lexington, KY: Leo zinnias and Virgo orderly.

Photo: Human Flower Project

On the evening of the summer solstice, 1997, we invited about thirty friends over and had them stand around the edges of the yard at their proper astrological stations, and beginning with Mimi Pickering (born closest to the spring equinox and thus the “firstborn” of the zodiacal year), each guest announced his or her birthdate as well as a “fairy name.”

“Tomato seed”… “Hercules”…. Our own was “Bubble,” which David Holwerk pointed out is not a fairy name but a stripper name.

After we’d all come full around the year, ending with Edward Roberts, born March 17, we planted a redbud tree in the center of the yard, watered by Nina McCormack and Marty Newell, the two Aquarians present.

This very contrived endeavor came to mind recently as we read about a far more serious conceptual garden at the Village of Zoar, Ohio, a town of German Separatists that, some claim, had the first communal society of any European immigrants to the U.S.

The Village of Zoar was named this year as one of the most endangered historical places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The entire town—including its garden—may be flooded if the Army Corps of Engineers decides not to rebuild a crumbling levee on the Tuscarawas River.

Zoar Garden circa 1960

Photo: Columbus Dispatch

The original settlers came to the U.S. in 1817 to escape religious persecution in their homeland. As a reflection of both their faith and their belief in a communal society, the villagers constructed in the center of town a large garden, designed after the book of Revelation, Chapter 21.

James Griffing, a 19th century visitor, wrote: “In the center of the garden stood a Norway spruce representing everlasting life, and around the tree was an arbor vitae hedge symbolizing heaven; This in turn was surrounded by twelve juniper trees; one for each of the apostles… A circular walk enclosed the centrum, and from this twelve other walks representing various paths to heaven radiated to the four sides of the garden. These in turn were intersected by walks which symbolized the worldly ways through which people wander on earth before they find salvation.”

How enlightened to recognize that many paths lead to heaven.

Drawing of the Zoar Garden with its radiating path and central spruce, representing Christ.

A more contemporary and horticulturally-minded historian writes, “Although some vegetables and fruits were grown here, the garden was filled mainly with flowers.” Is there a plant list anywhere? We haven’t found one, but as a former “conceptual gardener” (though a pagan one), we feel certain that as with our Gemini windflowers, the plants the Zoar gardeners chose symbolized some tie to their aspiration and greater design – the New Jerusalem.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Seeduction

You don’t have to have a trowel, or a yard, much less green fingers or familiarity with pH and hardiness zones to come home with a seed packet.

Dig around in any drawer around here and you’ll find sweet pea, zinnia, and even proteas packets from years gone by. We keep on hand an envelope of edelweiss seed a friend brought back from Germany years ago just…, well, just because.

Seed packets contain promise, especially for those of us who know little or nothing about viability. They’re the proto-triumph of potential, miniature bulwarks against future gloom and deprivation. Maybe that’s why repositories of them are called “banks.”

There was a long-serving picture editor at Time-Life whose name I can’t recall. He wrote well and remembered every picture he came across. One of his best pieces was about the numbers who regularly sent him their snaps and, almost as a matter of course, expected an off-the-cuff portfolio review. He was politeness itself in responding briefly to the submissions whilst wishing that he could bring to these responses words along the lines of: ‘You have a fine photograph of the Washington Monument but I would venture that it lacks two essential components. The first is Martin Luther King and the other is half a million people.’